Startup Systems

But here’s the key for an early-stage startup: "As we’re building our plans, we only focus on those first three months, that first chapter. So we break that down into monthly high-level goals, and that's what I hold the team accountable for,” he says. In other words, don’t try to get detailed for longer than a few weeks out. "At a startup, it’s... See more

Joining an early-stage startup means that resources are scarce, process is non-existent, and goals shift by the day. And tried-and-true playbooks will only go so far, as what works in a big company doesn’t always easily port over to a small startup setting.

Take, for example, the ambition to “make your venture-backed startup profitable”: to develop, market, and distribute a product or service that’s never existed before, in a form that’s valuable and accessible enough for large numbers of people to want to pay you for it, in sufficient quantity that your revenue consistently exceeds your costs.

If... See more

First-principles thinking, or thinking from first principles, sounds a lot more complicated than it is. It’s simply a technique for approaching problems with a beginner’s mind. Instead of working within assumptions and what people around you “know” to be true, you do the hard work of figuring out what’s actually true and, thus, what’s truly... See more